“… Foresight sets itself apart by eliminating the need for the user to be familiar with Linux …”

If that’s really the goal, then this philosophy should extend to the console as well, at least for the major Foresight tools like conary, and reviewers who are drawn to Foresight by this slogan shouldn’t be castigated for their lack of basic *nix knowledge.

That was the devil’s advocate part. Personally, I find this approach rather unappealing and uninspiring. This philosophy is to Linux what learning to play the Guitar Hero controller is to learning a real guitar. There’s a big difference between avoiding unnecessary complexity or difficulty and smoothing the transition into what can be one of the most powerful and satisfying computing experiences a person can encounter. Instead of eliminating the need to be familiar with Linux, the goal should be to guide a user into becoming familiar with Linux, which takes them to a much happier place.

IMHO this is a usability issue just as much as PEBKAC. A wrapper around conary that prompted for elevated priveleges when necessary, but ran as the user for operations that don’t need it is much more usable and safe. yaourt in Arch Linux does this, for example, and this behavior is a pleasure even for this old *nix user who does know how to use sudo.